Professor Maria Makrides is the Theme Leader for Healthy Mothers, Babies and Children. She is also Director of the Child Nutrition Research Centre with its headquarters at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.Maria is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Principal Research Fellow and also Professor of Human Nutrition, University of Adelaide.

Maria leads a multi-disciplinary research group of over 30 staff who are highly skilled in conducting and translating nutrition intervention trials involving mothers and babies.

As a research dietitian, Maria is committed to improving the nutrition and health of mothers and their babies through the conduct and translation of high quality research. She is particularly recognised for work investigating the health effects of dietary fatty acids, iron and novel dietary ingredients in the perinatal period. This work has resulted in significant changes in the composition of infant formulae and had an important impact on changing international food laws (Codex Alimentarius), which determine the minimum safe composition of infant foods. Most recently Maria was part of an international expert advisory group to comment on the composition of follow-up formulas under review by Codex.

Maria has over 180 peer reviewed publications including a number in the prestigious journals The Lancet, The Journal of the American Medical Association and the British Medical Journal. She is also co-editor of four books, including the most widely sold textbook in paediatric nutrition that is now translated into Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

Malek, L. (2015). Exploring the nutrition knowledge, attitudes and practices of pregnant women in Australia. (PhD Thesis, The University of Adelaide).

Research Grants

In the last 5 years, aside from my NHMRC fellowship support, I have secured 6 NHMRC grants for 3 new trials and 3 follow-up studies totaling >$10 million. The award of a Centre of Research Excellence in Foods for Future Australians (CIA, 2012-16) underscores my ability to pull together and secure productive and cohesive multi-disciplinary teams.